My advice to my son was never be the one to throw the first punch. But, if someone hits you first you damn well make sure you hit them back harder. Then call me when they haul you into the principal's office and I'm there for you.

It happened once, he got suspended for a day and the other kid who started it (confirmed by the playground monitor) got nothing. The principal said I never should have told my son to hit back and I told her "bullshit" and took my kid home.

I have trouble believing the cop would come to school, over the objections of the principal, to sit with the boy. Sounds like he wasn't' regularly assigned to the school. Wasn't' he supposed to be on patrol?

There's more than one way to stand up to a bully...and I could see how this ninja mind-game could confuse the common bully.

Over the decades of our relationship, my husband has told two bully stories (and never linked them, though I have)...in the first, he was a sophomore CC runner and was beat up by some upper classman teammates for coming in last in a meet. In the second, he was a senior, sticking up for a freshman by standing down this kid's bully/tormentor, on the bus. No punches were thrown.

So Scott, it's not as foreign to me to accept that "a kid is self-aware enough to say "that's not who I am"."

My own experiences with bullies is that a fist (Or knife or gun or military) "does the job"/

You really have to understand the mindset of a bully to get that, though. While I was more than my fair share of belligerent when I was a kid/teen, I never bullied as my father, an active duty soldier, always taught to defend the weak.

On the other hand, some "friends" (teammates, more accurately) I had through childhood were most definitely bullies. As a red-head with freckles, you can bet I learned early how to deal with bullies.

The childhood bully lives in a perpetual closed loop. They antagonize a victim, receive positive reinforcement from their peeps, get a little high on the adrenaline and possibly endorphine of a high stress/conflict situation, and then consolidate their authority over said peeps. Rinse, repeat, until the ego is so built up it becomes impossible to show the bully the error of his/her ways.

The only way to break that loop is to introduce an outside influence that will both physically shock the bully and make them lose face with their toadies. The is best achieved, normally, with a balled fist delivered to a sensitive and/or vulnerable spot. The nose is a great one to pick as the psychological image of a bloody nose and bloody shirt is tough for the dethroned bully to overcome.

You still have to deal with the todies. They don't just stand there, mouth agape, like in some after-school special. If you're going to have the stones to stand up to a bully, you must, absolutely must, be prepared to get your ass kicked.

There's no correct answer, it's always situational. My old man taught me to realize when a fight was inevitable. Not to look to fight; but to listen to my gut and when the fight was going to happen, to make sure you got the first punch in and to make it count! It worked well.

Dads are much better prepared to deal w/ this. The problem of bullying is age old. But, w/ so many dads being absent you have more bullies and more victims, both being a result of no father in the home.

How after school specialish. And in the REAL world, the one the rest of us live in, that kid's life is going to be hell until he gets out of school. Especially if the description of the principle is accurate.

Can't speak for all Tennessee public schools, but there is a school resource officer for each of the middle and high schools in our district. I'm not sure about the grade schools, but I imagine they float over there as well occasionally.

@edutcher ... as a vet of the last 'draftee" war, although I was an enlistee, I recall the ratio of support element troops to infantry in the grass was 9 to 1. That did not mean some of the 9 didn't fire their rifles.

Asymmetrical warfare is funny that way. Before I retired, my previous boss had deployed to Iraq and implied that I should volunteer to join him. On his third day there, in a very Green Zone job, he called me at 0300 my time to tell me a 120mm rocket had just been fired in to the US Embassy cafeteria where he was eating. he was a bit excited to say the least.

@edutcher ... as a vet of the last 'draftee" war, although I was an enlistee, I recall the ratio of support element troops to infantry in the grass was 9 to 1. That did not mean some of the 9 didn't fire their rifles.

No slur intended, but I think you misunderstand my point.

I read somewhere that many men, regardless of branch (infantry, quartermaster, etc.) were reluctant in the extreme to fire their weapons at another human being, even in wartime. The 90% may in fact be wrong, but it was a fairly high percentage.

I used a draftee army as an example only because it seemed to me that in a professional army, as we have today, that figure would be less.

Maybe our experience in Canada is different, but our local schools in our city all have a designated police officer who works with the school (most of them take on fiv or six schools) and they are frequent visitors, welcome everywhere. They then have knowledge and understanding of the environment if ever there is a need for official intervention. It makes everything much less of a "big deal".

I am not the world's most cop-friendly person myself, but the program works brilliantly.

We're being lectured by a hoser w/o the integrity to have even a cursory profile.

Gee Tybalt, Do you think possibly some bullying goes on when the cops aren't around or outside of school. The article speaks to bullying in school but I hope you realize that is not the only venue for bullying. A kid has to learn to take care of themself. With your "cop" remedy there probably is no bullying in donut shops.

I just read the bio of Jim Abbot, titled, Imperfect. There was a kid tormented and bullied for his deformity who learned to shine. No cops. His parents were supportive but not protective, they taught him to take care of himself. That is the most important duty for all parents..to make themselves not needed. And, a duty many parents just don't get. Thank God for jim Abbot he had wise, loving, parents.

That night, the officer called my son and listened to him awhile. In the morning, he bypassed the principal and headed straight for my son’s class, taking a seat next to him and near the boy. He told the boy my son was his friend and he didn’t want anyone bothering him. The cop told the boy he could be his friend, too, but the boy didn’t say much of anything.

Does anyone else think that a cop offering to be your friend is a little creepy?

I'm relieved I'm not the only thinking that story is something less than the whole truth, if not outright fiction.

It was the cop going to the classroom and the "friend" crap that almost made me gag (just too too "sweet").

A stunt like that might (repeat, might) work on 2nd graders but not 7th graders.

That would get the kid shunned by everyone and make his life even more difficult in school. A lot of the students would have admired him (possibly, probably secretly) for not fighting back, especially if he said "I don't want to hurt you" to the bully in front of other students.

But to have the cop come to his defense with a Mr. Roger's act would be a 7th grade "social death sentence" lasting through high school.

I just don't believe any of it happened except maybe her son got bullied.

I don't remember much bullying at school. The upperclassmen used to give us some grief, but I suppose later on we got some of our own back. Is bullying such a widespread phenomenon nowadays, or is it one of those things that are being dramatized and publicized by a small sector of the community.....That writer looks like a dweeb 7th grader I went to school with. Asthmatic. When she had an attack, we used to steal her inhaler and watch her turn blue. We always gave it back, however, before the went into cardiac arrest. Good times, but, looking back, I can see how an experience like that could sour one on schoolyard bullies.

Kids get bullied by all kinds of people nowadays. Principals bully the kids who bring a knife to school to cut up their fruit, for example. School administrators bully kids who punch the bully in the nose. Parents are bullied into attending seminars on bullying.

The bullies are bullied by everyone. Used to be that "fag" was the most humiliating taunt. Now, the worst taunt is "bully!"

Listening to a bully's father complain that my son had the audacity to smack his kid was music to my ears. I told the principal, the school shrink and the school police officer that I'd tell him to do it again. My son never had a bit of trouble after that.

One of my son's classmates was a repeated victim of bullying, got his head pushed into a wall locker, and was never right since.

Both episodes were at a generally well regarded suburban high School. I'll be sure to care if you think I was wrong.

I was bullied as a kid, though I was much bigger than the bully. We got into fights and he never got into trouble and I hated going to school. In retrospect, I wish I had stood up and knocked the shit out of that bully when I had the chance, but I was taught by my parents that even though I had the opportunity, I should resist the urge to kick ass. My father told me that one day that bully would pick on someone who wouldn't hold back, but I shouldn't be that guy.

That kid ended up joining the army and was murdered when a drug deal he was participating in went bad. I don't feel sorry for him. Fucker deserved it.

edutcher, your memory comes from a study done at the end of, or just after WW2, at the request of General Marshall. I can't say how reliable the study was, but the upshot was that their training failed to prepare them for combat. The study seemed to support the conclusion that only 10% of the soldiers studied fired (or aimed) their weapons. I expect the Airborne divisions would have something to say about that. ;)

It's sad but true to say "The more you bleed in peace, the less you bleed in war." Today the more modern version is "Fight as you train, train as you fight."

In either case, the goal is to train the infantryman to aim his weapon, instead of blindly firing from over or around shelter. This is the "rational" thing to do when bullets are flying past you. Ironically enough, "As Montesquieu put it, a rational army would run away." (From Jerry Pournelle's Mercenaries and Military Virtue)